Dai_Jua : Any difference in your perceptions of nationalism and patriotism is habituated. I certainly don't think of one as being any more negative than the other; it's a phenomenon that occurs when people try to pump up patriotism as being some grand and noble objective while nationalism is associated with rabidly authoritarian regimes.

I don't know why you seem to think I dislike pride. That is a incorrect; I dislike misplaced pride.

Traduweise : What you say makes sense. I just wanted to make sure you weren't saying that it was a bad thing to have pride in your nation. Some of your comments were confusing.

It's still kind of nonsensical. When I googled the definitions on google, would you know?, the definition for nationalism was negative, and the definition for patriotism was positive; but the definition for nationalism described it as "patriotic feelings".

   Well lets be honest. We can't chose what country we are born into, so there is no reason to be proud of its past accomplishments, but for some reason I still feel a large amount of pride for being American. I find our history riveting, and believe that wile we Americans have many faults, that this truly is one of the best country's on Earth. 

JigSaw :

Nuked innocent Japanese people?

There was a war on - while those two bombs claimed a lot of lives, a conventional bombing campaign (followed by a ground assault) would have claimed a heck of a lot more. 

FredElliot : There is a war going on and that is your excuse to kill innocent people? If that is the case lets bomb every city in the united states because we are in a war and no one is innocent.

Well, firstly, I'm not going to argue that war is right.  If you are arguing that all war's are wrong - then no problem.  But if you are arguing that the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were wrong because they killed citizens rather than soldiers, and that America was the only side to commit this atrocity during WWII, then that is where I think the logic starts getting faulty.  The Japanese army killed many innocent civilians in China, Thailand, Burma, Dutch East Indies etc.  They were killed by conventional means rather than a nuclear bomb.  Does that make their deaths less wrong than those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? War is a despicable business.  But in the case of Japan, it was obvious that the armed forces and the population were never going to surrender until the Emperor gave the say so.  It was estimated that the Japanese could arm 2 million people in the defence of Japan and that it would take hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers to carry out a successful invasion, costing 10s, hundreds of thousands of lives in the process on both sides.

After the second bomb was dropped, the Emperor of Japan saw sense.  He immediately gave the order for peace negotiations.  The Japanese Army could surrender without losing face and a costly conventional bombing campaign and invasion wouldn't need to take place.  That is why the bombs were dropped.  The Americans ended the war earlier than it might have occurred.  The Americans bore the brunt of the fighting in the Pacific and they would have borne the brunt of the fighting in an invasion of Japan so if they could bring peace about in a way that cost fewer casualties and ended the war in the Pacific without prolonged fighting in all the other countries the Japanese were in - it was the lesser of two evils. 

The U.S has done some things that seem wrong, but most of these things have been resolved. I am proud of my country because of what the things we have done to give us more rights. The phrase 'We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote general welfare..." It really does mean something.

I am thankful to be living in the United States over some other parts of the world. There are also other parts of the world I believe I could live in just as happily. When you haven't traveled anywhere and see the rest of the world through the media, then you are get a very narrow, incomplete picture of what the rest of the world is like... and it's usually negative because negative news sells better.

Am I proud of my "country," though?  Not as much as I was when I was an innocent child.

More correctly, I am not proud of the people within it (the "country" is really very abstract and can cover a wide array of subjects... but I doubt the question is asking if people are proud that their farmland can grow crops or that drinkable water exists.)  Individually, you do what you have to in order to survive, and individually most of us prefer some sort of structure which includes laws and a governing body to enforce them, but I believe the government has gotten out of touch with what is best for the country and its people.

I wasn't alive 50 years ago, so I don't know what things were like then. But even such a short time ago it wasn't the same as it is now, and talking with people from back then often don't like what things are like now. Some things have changed for the better; some for the worse; and depending on who you ask, you'll have different people speak on both sides. No choices make everyone happy.

Sometimes the better choice is to let people fail and not give them second chances. It's a way to push people and hopefully make them stronger. This "we will take care of every one of you" policy, though good on paper, has major flaws in the real world.


The best example I remember as a teen was this: to think of the country as a small business. (Real-life comparison words are shown in brackets)  If you are working, you get paid (jobs), if you aren't working, you may get time off (welfare), but only for a little while even if you haven't found a new place to work. You can't be expected to get paid for the rest of your life doing nothing unless you put a lot of time and effort into the business (social security). If you start working without approval from the company (illegal aliens), you are at best a volunteer and are given no pay or accommodations and/or are eventually told to leave. There is no middle ground accepting you as a volunteer and then paying you anyway.

If you break the laws set up by your business, you get fired (thrown in jail/prison). You don't get to go talk to a bunch of other people (lawyers) and through alternative reasoning get rehired even though your fellow employees or others don't agree with it. You're done. Being passionate about your small business, you outsource your work (jobs to our countries) as little as possible because, even if it is a little cheaper, it still means less wages for your local employees which can cause them to have to quit and find another job that pays better (leave the country and move to another.)  Showing passion for your local business, you also fight to keep it (military.) You don't sell out no matter the cost because the business and your employees means more than anything that can change that. All business make mistakes or parts fail (slavery as one example) but once the specific part is fixed and operations move forward, you work to not let it break again but no longer worry about the fact that it broke in the first place. It has no bearing on future employees unless the same part breaks a second time.

If your business is failing or you wish to improve things, you often borrow money from banks willing to finance you (other countries) to aid you in these matters. Compensation for this is paying interest on the money that you borrow, but if you borrow so much that you cannot pay back the bank, you are bankrupt (as the country is as a whole now with a $16,000,000,000 debt. If all working Americans were taxed 100% of their income, we could still not start to pay the interest on the debt much less the principle. The United States is literally bankrupt.) While banks can help you along, they aren't an end-all solution, and to keep the small business that you are passionate about open, you have to make changes that benefit the employees, not the president and CEOs (President and government) if you expect the business to remain open.

And what happens to small businesses that fail? They go bankrupt and are either taken over by someone else or are dismantled. And yes, as much as any young generation wants to think that things will "always be here" -- like your freedoms -- it isn't until you lose them that you realize changes should have been made while they still had the chance.


So, no, there are many things that make me no longer proud of my country. I'm only thankful for some of the freedoms that we are given like freedom to practice religion. I am sure that some will see laws in my reasoning, but it is my reasoning and they are my beliefs nonetheless.

I am pround of being british in a way but not in another because I feel people assume we are all stuck in the 1800's and still go around been very posh and old fashioned, and it don't help that our leaders are "posh boys who wouldn't know the price of a bottle of milk" but I am pround of what we do in the olympics andn businesses that are suriving dispite the economy

I'm Canadian by birth, and I feel very patriotic towards Canada. I currently live in the US, and I feel some patriotism towards America, though not as much as towards Canada. I think that America is heading down the wrong path, and I don't see much coming from Washington to counter that.

I have to say that (and like it was mentioned before that our country is more better off than most) I am not all that proud of our country (United States). We get into other countries business, and might I add that it is the ones that have oil. Also, our country has changed so much and although some may be good a lot of it is bad for instance basing laws on religious beliefs, I mean not everyone in this place is of the same religion and I find that completely intolerant. I think that our country has lost complete control on it's morals and has become corrupt in so many ways.

No.  Not anymore.  America's since of morals have decline drastically.  I can not bear to be associated with such horror.  I hope America will change for the better over the next 4 years.

Yes. But I am not a yankee.

I'm proud to be in America due to our rights and freedoms not everyone has this wonderful opportunity like we do.  That being said it kills me to see out country like this seriously.  It seems like everythings going to pot morals, economy, and most important is the vision of the American dream that inspires so many great things it seems like were going to start falling by the wayside and that seriously sucks.

I will say that I'm proud as to where I'm grateful for living in a free country.

The government is corrupt though in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if the US government was behind the 9/11 attack. Not saying if it was a setup or not - but I don't trust the US government - even as a US citizen.